Have you ever tried changing a behavior and no one noticed you were different? It’s not uncommon.
Jim was a “hands-on boss.” He had high standards and his team performed well. However, they depended on him for almost all decisions, and as a result he worked long hours and on weekends. The eye-opener came when he missed an important baseball game where his son scored the winning run. His kids were growing up fast, and he was missing out. He knew his people were capable of more, so he began delegating and stopped checking up on them. As the weeks passed, he was surprised that his team kept knocking on his door and his phone kept ringing.
Colleen was constantly complaining about a man in her department who often didn’t follow through on responsibilities. After getting feedback that her teammates thought her negativity was the major problem on the team, she stopped her complaints. She was surprised that during breaks, these same teammates started bringing up the subject of the latest problems with this man, almost like they were enticing her to jump back in the fray.
Has this ever happened to you? Did you ever get feedback that you were too critical or didn’t listen enough or were not a team player… changed your behavior, and it didn’t make any difference?
Why does this happen?
- In part the answer lies in physics. Newton’s Third Law to be exact. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Or as Kurt Lewin described in his Force Field Theory, the status quo is maintained by equally opposing forces. The more you try to change, the more the system pushes back to keep things the same.
- Often your actions serve a purpose that no one is consciously aware of. Although Jim’s direct reports didn’t like being managed so closely, they were spared the stress of juggling priorities and managing team deadlines. In Colleen’s case, who was going to hold the slacker on the team accountable if she stopped complaining, and who would make management aware of what was going on?
- People continue to see what they expect to see. In other words, sometimes they just don’t notice you’ve changed your behavior. We are creatures of habit and fall into patterns of perception as well as patterns of behavior. It also might be that your new behaviors are tentative or awkward. After all, if you were skillful at it, you’d probably have been doing it all along.
- People don’t trust that you’ve really changed. If you’ve acted a certain way for a long time, people might not trust that you’ll continue in this new way. They think you’ll revert to your old behaviors. And quite possibly they’ll be right. Not because you don’t have good intentions, but because new behaviors need to be supported and nurtured as your skills grow.
As the forces of physics push back on us, we can come to believe that change wasn’t possible and slip back into our old patterns.
Resist resisting.
It can feel like an “either/or” situation – either resist or revert. Resisting wears you out and is not sustainable over the long-term. But instead of giving up, here are 5 things you can that provide support for change:
- Inform: If you’re going to try a new behavior, there’s no reason to keep it a secret. Jim’s direct reports didn’t understand his intention was to stop managing so closely. He could have said, “I’m going to try a new management style. I want to delegate more and let you run with the ball without supervising so closely.”
- Engage: Ask for feedback. Enlisting people to help you invests them in supporting your change. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. Jim could have said, “I’d like your help. You know it’s a big change for me, so I might slip up sometimes. If I do, I’d appreciate your bringing it to my attention.”
- Understand: Understand that changing your behavior will not only affect others, it will impact the entire system. There will be pressure on you to revert. Notice the pressure, but don’t react to it.
- Allow: Allow others to step into the space that you once filled. You might need to wait awhile for someone to venture into it. And they might not fulfill the role you played as well as you did, especially initially, because they will need to learn new behaviors and skills. Have patience.
- Acknowledge: Put it on the table. Talk about what is happening and changing in a non-judgmental way. Acknowledging makes it possible for everyone to participate consciously and provides support for everyone as you develop new ways of being together.
Excellent post, Jesse. My clients tend to get frustrated when others don’t notice their changes. Its hard when they are working very hard to change a behavior, and the feedback they get is not encouraging. I tell them “keep doing what you’re doing. It takes them longer to notice, and they want to know that you mean it!”.
Hi Mary Jo, Your comment reminds me of the value of having a good coach. Because that frustration makes you want to give up, having a coach who does see your changes and who encourages you to hang in there is an important source of support. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and share your experience.
I ran a product support department for a Big 4 firm where I had to restructure the department. Change was extremely difficult at first. I had to be a leader and stick to it. Eventually, through the force of my actions, many saw the change. But it wasn’t easy. Change management is an extremely difficu;t concept.
Hi Henry. I appreciate your emphasizing the importance of sticking with it, especially in the beginning while it’s the hardest. It’s difficult just to change yourself. It becomes even more complex when we try to change others. Personally, I think the term “change management” is an oxymoron – a topic for another post. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Hi Jesse – this is interesting. As someone who is not backward in coming forward (as you know!) I find whenever I hold back to allow others to step up – they think there’s something wrong with me (sick/tired/bored/no interest)! The topic ties quite nicely into Susan Mazza’s post about being labelled. Read : http://twrt.me/ztagc3.
It’s all about our comfort zones I think, and managing expectations about change and people’s behaviours. We count on each other to act in a certain way as you illustrated in your post. Our own subtle changes impact any dynamic.
Hi Dorothy, What happens when you hold back is a great illustration. I think it is human nature to get uncomfortable when people who are ordinarily predictable act unpredictably. I agree that by communicating your intentions, it helps manage expectations and people will be more likely to support your change. Given that it makes such a difference, I am curious why so often we change our behavior and don’t say anything about what we are doing.
Thanks for sharing the link to Susan’s post. It does tie quite nicely. And thanks to you for stopping by and sharing your insights.
Glad to have found your blog, Jesse! It’s the external factors that can discourage us the most when we try to change.
This post reminds me of Marshall Goldsmith’s book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”. He discusses the importance of making sure your personal change stakeholders are kept up to date about your efforts to improve. It’s a great book, holding a mirror to those behaviors that keep us from taking our professional life to the next level.
Have a great day!
Hi Lisa, You highlight a really important point – the importance of keeping all stakeholders up to date, no matter what the change effort is, big or small. If you’re going to err, it’s better to err on the side of over-communication because under communicating is one of the top reasons change efforts fail. Not only does it hold a mirror to us, when they are aware of what’s happening, they can see where they fit and how they might support the change. Thanks for making the connection with Marshall Goldsmith’s book. And thanks also for extending the conversation in this area. Hope to see you here again!
Hi Jesse – really interesting post that highlights many issues I come across in my work too. I would echo Henry’s point about it not necessarily being easy but if people start with a really clear idea of what that change will be like as an experience once they have completed those changes, then it makes keepin’ on, keepin’ on with the effort a lot easier.
Although we may need others to buy into certain changes we make, other changes only need for us to be able to evaluate if they have been achieved. The clearer we are about the destination the easier that journey towards it becomes and we also know when we’ve arrived.
Hi Glenn,
This is such an important point, it should be the 6th strategy –
Remember: – remember why you are making the change and what will be different as a result of it.
I’m laughing because vision one of the main topics I blog about and I left it out here. Thanks so much for reminding me.
I was making an assumption that the upfront work had been done and was writing about why implementing the change fails. But sometimes people haven’t done the upfront work well and aren’t clear about their vision for the change. And even if they are, staying connected to it is essential during implementation.
The comments are one of my favorite parts of blogging. Thanks so much for enriching my post with yours.
Thanks for the great resource, Jesse. After 13 years of doing business at one pace, our team is in the process of transforming the way things have been done. Having to stay ahead of the wave poses unique challenges and requires constant changes. This valuable info has been forwarded to each member of our team. Thanks for your help!!
Thanks, Steve. This post focuses on individual behavior, which will most likely need to change if your team is in a transformation process. However, there are some additional things to consider for team and organizational change. You might want to take a look at The Change Checklist, which you can download for free on the homepage of our website. Best wishes for you and your team.
Great post Jesse! The piece about the unknown needs of others is very important. As I have changed and seen others change there have been people around us that resisted our new and different behaviors, sometimes with great emotion. It is difficult, but infinitely rewarding, to stay the course. Your post serves as validation for the difficult path. Thanks,
Hi Russ, Your comment points out that not only will people sometimes not notice your change, others might even actively resist it. I appreciate your bringing this up and sharing your own experience that, when you know you’re doing the right thing, it’s worth the effort to stay the course.
Great post Jesse. The inform is key as often people don’t share this aspect and my guess is for fear of blowing one’s own horn or for fear of having an audience to judge you should you not change the behaviour. The reality is as you change your behaviour, you need those around you to also learn to change theirs, hence the inform helps people consciously observe and feedback whether they are seeing or experiencing the change or not.
Thanks, Thabo, for illuminating the point that informing people you are working on changing a behaviour “puts them on alert” — that a) they will need to change their own behaviour and b) that they should pay attention so they can provide feedback. It’s difficult to change without feedback. I don’t know very many people who get dressed in the morning without looking in a mirror. That’s what feedback provides – a mirror to see what we really look like.
It doesn’t take much time to explain what you’re doing. I agree with your reasons on why people often don’t. I also think that for some people it’s part of a general communication style to not verbalize what they are doing, feeling or experiencing. The problem is, most of us are not mind-readers and often don’t even see what the other person thinks is so obvious.
This is so interesting, Jesse. I JUST wrote in my journal today, “What if they changed and you didn’t notice?”
As you know, I’ve been thinking about what reverses downward, destructive spirals and how to spark upward spirals and I’ve come to believe that the single biggest missed opportunity is in noticing other people making sincere efforts to change. (See http://worklore.com/Organizational-Learning-Change/what-is-an-upward-spiral.html)
It’s almost as if we hit the “delete” button and their change doesn’t register at all. From this perspective, I think one of the biggest causes is simply distraction/fragmented attention, combined with distrust that the change is sincere, and a mental model that doesn’t count incremental change as valid.
Yet studies of how people get out of terrible situations (ie, violence in Northern Ireland) show that one of the most critical steps is to notice and “up the ante” when someone makes a positive move by changing a bit more ourselves. This reduces the forcefield pushing others back to their old ways.
How might that change how we pay attention… looking for the ways people are changing?
Thanks again for highlighting a very important step in the change process!
All the best,
–Elizabeth Doty
Hi Elizabeth,
I appreciate your pointing out that fragmented attention can be a cause of not noticing change. I hadn’t thought of that …because I was thinking of something else. (couldn’t resist :-))
I would add to your list that one of the times we don’t notice others changing is when we are invested in their staying the same (even if if we don’t like their behavior). For example, sometimes people bond together against their boss, and when the boss changes they don’t notice it because they need something to complain about in order to maintain their connection. The system maintains itself, and when we are caught in that kind of system, we don’t even see it.
Thanks for raising the question of what do we need to do to support other people’s change efforts. You make an excellent point that we need to share responsibility for changing the direction of the spiral.
I’m not surprised that we are thinking about similar questions, Elizabeth. Thank you for your thought-provoking comments.
This is a really excellent post… Thanks Jesse.
Thanks, Charlotte. Glad you found it helpful.